The Algebra of Need

Immediately after his shot the heroin addict is cheerful, almost ebullient. This active response to the shot quickly gives way to the "nod" or "nodding out." The junkie's goal with each shot of junk is to "get the nod on,” to get into the detached state of twilight sleep in which the long reveries of the opiates can unfurl themselves. In this state there is no pain, no regret, no distraction, and no fear.

Junk yields a basic formula of ‘evil’ virus: The Algebra of Need. The face of 'evil' is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control.

Heroin addicts exist in a pyramid of total need, one level eating the level below (it is no accident that junk higher-ups are always fat and the addict in the street is always thin) right up to the top or tops as there are many junk pyramids feeding on peoples of the world and all built on the basic principles of monopoly.

Junk is the mold of monopoly and possession. The addict stands by while his junk legs carry him straight in on the junk beam to relapse. Junk is quantitative and accurately measurable. The more junk you use the less you have and the more you have the more you use. All the hallucinogen drugs are considered sacred by those who use them; there are Peyote Cults and Bannisteria Cults, Hashish Cults and Mushroom Cults—"the Sacred Mushrooms of Mexico enable a man to see God"—but no one ever suggested that junk is sacred. There are no opium cults. Opium is profane and quantitative like money.

~William Burroughs & Terence McKenna~

Philadelphia on July 3, 1776

"The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more." ~ John Adams

Of course, John Adams mistook the importance of legality for that of rhetoric.  For as Posterity knows well, the Fourth Day of July 1776 became the National Day of the United States.  Although, the legal separation of the Colonies from Great Britain occurred on that Second Day when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence behind closed doors.  Thereupon, Congress appointed a Committed of Five, headed by Thomas Jefferson, to articulate to the Public the reasons for the Congress's declaration.  The resultant document was the Declaration of Independence, which was made known to the Public on the Fourth of July 1776.  Concerning, however, the official signing of the aforementioned document, there has been a historical debate, culminating in 1884 when:

Mellen Chamberlain, the distinguished historian and Librarian of the Boston Public library, definitely established the fact that Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson had all been defective in their memory and that the Declaration positively had not been signed on July 4 ("The Authentication of the Engrossed Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776", Wilfred J. Ritz).

Contradicting historical fact and legal truth, our Nation's holiday remains and shall continue to remain on the Fourth of July upon the foundation of political rhetoric.

The Chekhov Gun as the Red Herring

Archer's "Training Day" (14 January 2010)

Sterling Archer: Oh, my god! You killed a hooker!
Cyril Figgis: Call girl!
Sterling Archer: No, Cyril!
[Cyril: She was a call-]
Sterling Archer: When they're dead, they're just hookers. God, I said the cap on the poison pen slips off for no reason, didn't I?
Cyril Figgis: But I just assumed that if anything bad happened...
Sterling Archer: No, do not say the Chekhov gun, Cyril. That, sir, is a facile argument.
Woodhouse: And also woefully esoteric.
Sterling Archer: Woodhouse...
Woodhouse: Fetching a rug, sir.
Sterling Archer: Now he's fetching a rug. Happy, Cyril?
Cyril Figgis: No! No, I'm not happy!
Sterling Archer: Well, guess what? Me neither! I mean, big picture, I wouldn't say I'm a happy person.
Woodhouse: Sir, I have fetched the rug.
Sterling Archer: Plus, now I'm out of a rug.

Why is the Chekhov gun both a "facile argument" and also "woefully esoteric"?

Anton Chekhov, the Russian dramaturge, outlined the principle of his eponymous gun on at least three occasions.

• "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."
• "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there."
• "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

The Chekhov gun, however, does not kill the call-girl turned hooker, but we, the viewers, are misled by Archer's highly specific "hypothetical" situation explaining his need for an "underwear gun" (i.e. the Chekhov gun).  Thus, Archer has transformed the Chekhov gun into a red herring so as to be esoterically comical.

On Scholarly Insight

What is revealed by the philosopher blinds those unaccustomed to the sun's rays.  On the other hand, scholars' eyes tend to be old & feeble--or perhaps refined & refracted--and thus see specs of light at angles conducive to insight.

The rest...follow Oedipus to Colonus.

 

On Calculating the Circumference of the Earth

There is an approximate delay of 4 minutes from Atlantic City to Philadelphia--a 60 mile Earth distance--for the sun to set.  So... the Earth rotates at about 15 miles per minute.  And since there are 1440 minutes in a day, I calculate the Earth's circumference to be ~21,600 miles, which is a far more accurate estimation than Eratosthenes.

An Addendum to William S. Burroughs

I have heard that heroine addicts--junkies--seek by means of self-destruction to recreate their primordial high.  

"If you have no histamine-produced symptoms, antihistamine drugs produce no effect.  I bought some ampules of an antihistamine drug and shot a double dose.  I experienced nothing but a slight depression (the depressing effects of some antihistamine preparations are "side effect" which chemists intend to eliminate).  A shot that felt exactly like morphine when I was sick now produced effects that were barely perceptible.  It seems that a user does not get a positive kick from junk.  What he gets is relief from withdrawal sickness.  Possibly all pleasure is basically relief from a condition of need, or tension.  Junk is the medium in which the junk the junk-dependent cells live.  When junk is cut off junk cells die, and excess histamine is produced to carry away the dead cells.  The function of allergic sneezing, running at the nose and eyes, vomiting and diarrhea, is to get rid of something.  During addiction, junk is a biological necessity, like food, water or sex.  There is no other substance that becomes in this way a part of the biological rhythm of the body."

What then is redemption to a junky, but withdrawal sickness--a willful overcoming of a base biological process.  If though the junky craves junk as we--who shot not William Tell's Eve--crave "food, water or sex", have we willfully overcome our base biology?  Without a biological temptation to overcome by sheer will, we have not yet truly suffered ourselves and are thus as base as the unredeemed user and the biology that binds all of our natures together.

Towards Understanding the Modern Allergy

“Pleasure is never as pleasant as we expected it to be and pain is always more painful. The pain in the world always outweighs the pleasure. If you don't believe it, compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is eating the other.”

~ "On the Sufferings of the World" by Arthur Schopenhauer

"Great mental suffering makes us insensible to bodily pain; we despise it; nay, if it should outweigh the other, it distracts our thoughts, and we welcome it as a pause in mental suffering. It is this feeling that makes suicide easy; for the bodily pain that accompanies it loses all significance in the eyes of one who is tortured by an excess of mental suffering."

~ "On Suicide" by Arthur Schopenhauer

This dis-ease with modernity, experienced psychologically and physiologically, stems from the modern conception of time as a linear progression.  Hegel articulated at length the necessary progression of humanity as conceived through linear time.

Unlike the more ancient view of a circular and thus eternal time, Hegel argued for a linear temporal progression to absolute knowledge.  Hegel's optimism first appears in Leibniz's notion of "the best of all possible worlds"--which Voltaire brilliantly parodies in Candide.  Diverging from Hegel and Leibniz, Schopenhauer astutely argues for "the worst of all possible worlds", and in his articulation of the world we see optimism's ugly sister--pessimism.  

The sufferings of the mind and body are not actually distinct.  If a body feels pain to a significant degree suddenly or over a period of time, the psyche complements the body in its physical reality.  They work in tandem.  In terms of pleasure and pain, mind and body are extensions of each other--as are will and representation.  There is a slight temporal disconnect between mind and body coexistent with its respective objectification of the will.  This permutation of body and mind finds its analog in subject and object.

My psyche & physiology react with modernity as if it were an allergy, manifesting as modern maladies:  asthma, hay fever, and comorbid psychological disorders--including, homosexuality.  (NB:  The last of which is no longer recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as a disorder, but it certainly constitutes a dis-ease.)  This allergy and dis-ease with modernity is coincidentally revealed by modern means, that is, by medical diagnosis and a blog.  Thus--in me--modernity finds its own cause and effect.

“If all pleasure is relief from tension, junk affords relief from the whole life process, in disconnecting the hypothalamus, which is the center of psychic energy and libido.”

~ William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch

(That there still could be an altogether different kind of pessimism, a classical type—this premonition and vision belongs to me as inseparable from me, as my proprium and ipsissimum; only the word "classical" offends my ears, it is far too trite and has become round and indistinct. I call this pessimism of the future—for it comes! I see it coming!—Dionysian pessimism.)  

~ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science